Bride of Thunder (20 page)

If I come home, I'll study hypnotism, for to stop pain is wonderful. Don't think I'm driven out of my wits, dear Mercy. An Austrian physician named Mesmer used the technique, which goes back to at least Paracelsus. I look at the sick, wounded, and dying, those who cannot escape their torment, and I'd sell my soul to give them ease—not even healing, just an end to pain.

And:

There's no such thing as “laudable pus.” The hogs who applaud this are surely responsible for much gangrene, probing wounds and operating with dirty hands: They're the same death-dealers who come from a patient ill with some loathsome or contagious disease and, unwashed, deliver a baby, killing many a new mother with puerperal fever.

But Mercy studied most carefully the notes he'd added to Dr. Francis Porcher's
Resources of Southern Fields and Forests,
a treatise published in 1863, at the urging of the Confederate surgeon general, to give substitutes for unobtainable drugs.

To replace quinine for malaria, there was dogwood, poplar, and willow bark steeped in whiskey. Elkhanah noted wryly that the last ingredient made it a popular medicine. Poke was used for neuralgia, itch, and syphilis. For the almost universal bowel ailments that probably killed more men than any other cause, there was blackberry, sweet gum, and willow.

When scurvy threatened, doctors were advised to ask the men to bring in greens, poke, dandelions, mustard, wild onion, pepper grass, and such. Elkanah noted that he had more faith in this preventive than in most of the cures.

Only the deepening of twilight, till she could no longer make out the words, alerted Mercy to the time and where she was. First she put the books on the table by the chair. Then she tucked the letters and herbs into a small chest by the window. This done, she changed into the flower-embroidered dress, pinned her hair back in a loose knot, and decided it was cool enough for a shawl.

As she entered the courtyard, Zane stood under the arch. His scowl disappeared when he saw her. Mercy's heart lifted at that. He must have some softness for her, to spend time as he had that day introducing her to the plantation, to refrain from simply exercising his rights as her master. If she were patient, went about her tasks with Jolie, and stuck to her resolves concerning him, wasn't it at least possible that someday his bitter disillusion might fade and make him risk loving again? If he'd love her, she'd never hurt him. But there was no way, now, to convince him.

“You're late,” he growled, but there was eagerness in his eyes as he stood back to let her precede him to the table.

The
cochinita pibil
was succulent. Zane complimented Chepa, echoed by Mercy. The sauce made a tasty flavoring for the rice. Zane told Chepa that after she'd saved enough
cochinita
for next day, she could give the rest to whatever people in the village had no one to hunt for them. This was evidently the practice of La Quinta, to avoid tainted meat and provide animal flesh for villagers.

Jolie, who'd been subdued during the meal, refused a dessert of spiced custard, but she asked for a second mug of hot chocolate, complaining that her first one hadn't been foamy enough. “You go and twirl it, then,” Zane suggested.

To Mercy's surprise, Jolie trotted off happily beside Chepa. “She likes to be in the kitchen,” Zane explained. “It's where she spent much of her time till last year, when she decided that as a young mistress she shouldn't behave like a scullery maid.”

Mercy couldn't help laughing. “So now she cuts henequén! Your daughter isn't getting to be a prim and proper sit-on-her-hands doll, Zane.”

“Neither are you,” he retorted somewhat grimly. “So it would seem I've at least found her a compatible teacher.”

“If she'll listen to me.” This was as good a time as any, so Mercy plunged in. “Zane, could Salvador study with her? Surely it would be an advantage for you to have a man around who was educated in both Mayan and white ways. If he becomes the leader you seem to think he will, it should be useful to give him the broadest knowledge possible.”

Zane frowned, turning his cup. “Doesn't it occur to you that Jolie and the boy are getting too old to continue their unusual friendship? Boys only a few years older than Salvador are often fathers.”

It was Mercy's turn to stare, but she recovered after a moment. “They must feel like brother and sister.”

His mouth twitched. “Incest is an old and honorable tradition, at least among noble or royal lines.”

“You twist everything!”

“I point out facts you'd prefer to ignore.”

Biting her lip, Mercy tried a different attack. “Maybe they shouldn't be together indefinitely, but I'm concerned with getting Jolie into the classroom.”

“She'll do as I tell her.”

Mercy gasped with exasperation. “You can send her body, but she can leave her mind in the kitchen or the field—anywhere but a place she detests.”

“It's up to you to capture her interest.”

“You should know that's impossible,” flared Mercy, “since she's as stubborn as you are!”

“And you're devious, sweet Mercy, for all your plain speaking.” The corner of Zane's mouth twitched. “You began this gambit by suggesting that Salvador's education would benefit me. Now it develops that you're simply trying to wheedle Jolie into the classroom.”

“That's one reason, but it seems a shame not to teach a child that anxious to learn. Who can tell? He might help bring peace to this country.”

Zane shook his head, as if in mute wonder. “You do argue a case! Now the future of Yucatán hinges on my decision. Try it, then. But I'll keep an eye on the situation.”

“I'm sure they won't elope for a few years,” Mercy teased, then winced at the slip the instant it was out. “I … I'm sorry.”

“You may be sure I'll guard my daughter better than I did my wife.”

“Would you want a woman you had to imprison?”

His eyes reflected the yellow light of the candle, though shadows dimmed his face, so that it gave the impression of being a disturbing, not-quite-human mask.

“Aren't you imprisoned, my dear?”

The deep, suggestive timbre of his voice made her heart leap so that the flow of blood through her veins felt edged with flames. “You mean I'm your bond-servant?” she almost whispered.

“I mean you sometimes want me as much as I always want you,” he said with a short laugh. “But propriety, the laws you've been taught, make you punish us both.”

If you would love me
…
if you would let me do the work of a human being …
She couldn't bare her feelings to him. Then, indeed, she would be undefended. “I won't live shut away in a tower like a one-woman harem,” she said. “I've a mind and capabilities that will atrophy if they're not used.”

“I enjoy your mind, contentious as it makes you,” he said. “And what of your capability for joy, for possessing and being possessed? Won't it wither away if you don't use it?”

“I'd rather it did than overgrow and crowd out everything else,” Mercy said, though she ached at that thought. Would it be possible to be near him like this for years and still deny him, deny the smoldering, tingling honey-fire that danced through her at the mere sound of his voice?

He made a disgusted sound. “I'll bet you had heroines when you were growing up!”

“I still do.”

His eyebrows arched up sardonically. “My God, you admit it! You are a freakish wench, though I'm almost afraid to call you that. If I hadn't won you from your scapegrace husband, I'd vow you came out of a convent.”

“Yet you've behaved as if I came from a brothel.”

“I've come to believe that's where most women, by instinct, would be most at home.”

“There'd be no brothels if men didn't want to escape from women they consider too good and pure to be in them.”

He flinched. “Little sharp-clawed devil! Just who, on heaven or earth, merited your admiration?”

“Joan of Arc,” said Mercy defiantly. “Florence Nightingale. Marie de France, Aspasia. And among men I would name Saint Francis, Jesus, Moses, and Pelagius—and my own father.”

“Of course, your father!”

“Of course!”

“Joan of Arc,” considered Zane. “She was a virgin witch-warrior who chided the king of France and her own judges. Yes, I can see why you'd like her! Florence Nightingale's a termagant, though I suppose that's forgivable in view of the lives she's saved. Aspasia was the whore of Pericles.”

“She was his
companion!
” Mercy corrected him fiercely. “And her home was the center of cultural and civic life! She helped Pericles write his speeches, and though she was publicly humiliated and tried for her life, without her the Golden Age might have been brass.”

“Oh, no doubt Pericles was simply her mouthpiece and she really composed those lines President Lincoln borrowed so successfully for the Gettysburg Address,” derided Zane. “The attainments of the other lady elude me, but I'm sure you'll dispel my ignorance.”

“Marie de France wrote poetry.”

Zane looked startled. “And for that she has a place in your temple?”

“Yes.”

Zane considered a moment. “I don't know her. Could you remember a few lines?”

“She's talking to her dead love in the poem I like best. Perhaps he was William Longsword, the bastard of Henry the Second and Fair Rosamund, though Marie herself may have been Henry's half sister.

“Hath any loved you well down there,

Summer and winter through?”

She continued with the tapestry-like words, shimmering with love and grief.

“There we have it!” Zane exclaimed, leaning forward. “You feel a bit ashamed, but you revere beauty and love!”

“I'm not ashamed!” she retorted. “Love is far different from lust.”

“Some day—or night—you must enlighten me,” he drawled. “But let's return to your heroes. Why Moses and Pelagius?”

“Both of them took mankind's part. Moses told God that if He wouldn't forgive the sinning Israelites, then Moses' name, too, should be taken out of God's book. I can't stand all those wretched religious men who were always ready to send everyone else to hell as long as their own souls were saved! Pelagius opposed Augustine, teaching that men could win salvation through their own efforts and weren't essentially evil. It's too bad Augustine won that battle and fastened the millstone of original sin on Western civilization. People might act better if they thought they were better.”

Zane didn't speak for so long that she thought she had made him angry or had estranged him with her revelation. Strange, she and Philip had never talked like this, and she had missed it, for Elkanah had given her his pungent views on almost everything and listened with questioning interest to her opinions. Tonight, carried away, she'd spoken nakedly of things important to her. Maybe Zane didn't like that. Maybe he didn't believe her or thought her a fool.

“What
have
I brought home?” he said at last. “I begin to understand why you rescued Mayel. How is your waif?”

“Happy.” Mercy hesitated to compliment him, but she decided it was only fair. “She's excited about all the things La Quinta
doesn't
have—a whipping post, jail, assistant mayordomo, or
administrador
.”

“I don't need those,” Zane said roughly. “The production of this plantation is far ahead of those using debt-laborers, and I've no wish to let a manager oversee
my
land and skim off profits.”

He was determined to seem cold-bloodedly practical. Yet he had bought Mayel, the plantation hummed with busy contentment under his direction, and he'd rescued Salvador at some risk to his own life.

Mercy waited just a moment and then raced on, following a thought that had just popped into her head. “Zane,” she said, holding her breath, “do you think it would be possible to include Mayel in the school, too?”

Zane sighed, passing a hand across his brow, then stared hard at her. “Now you want my daughter to study with that Indian wench, as well?”

“That ‘Indian wench' is a descendant of Mayan royalty.”

“Mayan royalty. Ah, yes.” He sighed again. “And why not?” he said finally. “Perhaps it would provide a more school-like atmosphere. Perhaps it would even divert young Salvador's attention from Jolie, and hers from him. Yes, go ahead and try it out, Mercy. But don't forget—I shall keep a sharp eye on the venture.”

Mercy couldn't stop the smile that stole across her face. “Well,” she said quickly, “Mayel should be pretty busy, then. Chepa wants to teach her about herbs and healing. She says Mayel reminds her of her daughter.”

Zane groaned. “
Every
scrawny thirteen-year-old with big eyes reminds Chepa of her daughter!”

“What's wrong with that?” bristled Mercy.

“Nothing,” muttered Zane. “I don't need to ask how Chepa relieved the boy's asthma that day, or about the wonders of her cupboard.”

“You must know
toloache
,” Zane said. “They call it jimsonweed in the United States.”

“But I thought that was poison!”

“Aren't lots of medicines when used improperly?
My
father used to say anything that could cure could kill, too.”

Chuckling with that dart, Zane went on to say that Aztec and Mayan physicians had been far ahead of their European counterparts at the time of the conquest.

“For a start, the Aztecs were fastidious. They bathed daily, whereas Europeans might go year in, year out, without more than an accidental dunking in the rain. The streets of Tencichtitlán were cleaned every day by a thousand sweepers, and human waste was collected and transported to farms. The Aztecs forbade the dumping of garbage into the lake or canals at a time when European streets were open sewers and ‘romantic' Venice stank to high heaven. But the Spaniards changed all that. It was much like the Vandals descending on Rome.”